Okay, okay. It wasn’t that bad. But after trying out this recipe last night, there wasn’t much to be impressed about. To put it simply, I’m not sure that cornmeal and panko go together. Oh, don’t get me wrong – they taste great together – but the problem here is that you’ll be lucky if you even get a taste of it. The size of the cornmeal granules added to the sparsity of the panko (the two don’t exactly blend together; after a few minutes of trying to mix the two together I violently shook my dish to watch the cornmeal and the panko separate like the red sea) added up to a disappointingly low-coverage ratio.
The long and the short of it? If you follow that recipe you will be saddened by the lack of any sort of flavor in the breading. If you add sauce (which the recipe suggests), there is a high probability that the breading will simply disappear. But like I said, when I did happen to get a bit of the cornmeal it was wonderful.
My suggestion to y’all if you think this recipe sounds too good to pass up? First off, get your mallet out and tenderize the chicken and give yourself more surface area. Secondly, double dip it – triple if you have to; a single dredge is not enough and the flavor will be missing. Oh, and the dry ranch dressing flavor? I couldn’t taste that at all and I’d suggest you break out your own seasonings to flavor it (salt, pepper, thyme, basil, Italian seasoning, whatever).
Until we meet again, Paula! I have high hopes of getting this recipe right the second time around.